Let the mining of cryptocurrency has ceased to be as profitable as last year, there are still many who want to invest in a device for mining. Newcomers expect the next jump of exchange rates, and the owners of large farms periodically update its fleet of equipment. Now at their order there are special components — the graphics card is of simple design optimized BIOS and motherboard with eight or more PCI Express slots. But they farm most of the miners still collect their hands in makeshift

enclosures and racks or use the paid services builders. Turnkey solutions appeared on the market quite late, and the Russian buyer can meet with them except on Aliexpress. The better that the domestic company 3Logic is a leading distributor of computer equipment in Russia — launched its own production farms for those miners who appreciate the convenience and reliability above all else save for parts.

Specifications, prices

Farm ACD and ACD Crypto Crypto Compact Rack 19 do not differ in basic configuration of the chassis. Both are able to take up to eight graphics cards and provide more than adequate power supply due to power supply at 2000-2200 watts certified 80 PLUS Gold

The servers are running a cheap CPU suitable for primary function performance (Celeron Crypto Compact in ACD and in ACD Crypto Pentium Rack 19). Amount of RAM and flash memory (8 and 128 GB, respectively) will suffice for any tasks related to mining, including the placement of large paging files.

The main difference between ACD and ACD Crypto Crypto Compact Rack 19, except for the form factor and the device is in the motherboard — rather exotic in both cases. Esonic Board HM65-BTC-COMBO C2 in the composition of ACD Crypto Rack 19 designed for mobile processors Intel socket FCPGA988, which the company no longer uses since the architecture Ivy Bridge. That is why the specs of the ACD Crypto Rack 19 appears quite old CPU with a lower clock frequency and the amount of L2 cache compared to the Celeron from the farm ACD Crypto Compact.

Motherboard YANYU K17 in the composition of ACD Crypto Compact, by contrast, is quite a modern product with support for CPU standard on LGA1151, but stands out among similar boards for mining a specific form factor and a way to connect to the PSU.

3Logic does not sell these farms without the GPU installed, but offers many configuration options for video cards in the “red” or “green” chips on six or eight pieces. The choice of accelerators for Crypto ACD and ACD Crypto Compact Rack 19 identical, except for the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and the top mining NVIDIA cards (GP102-100), which is available only in Crypto ACD chassis Rack 19.

The most interesting choice from the point of view of the miner look Board Radeon RX 470, which 3Logic gave a modified BIOS from RX 570 with lower timings of RAM, as well as specialized accelerators GP104-100 and GP102-100 based graphics cards GeForce GTX 1070/1080 and GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. The latter was released as early as March of this year, and the chance to buy the cost of retail while virtually none.

Farm delivered to buyers without a preinstalled operating system and software for mining, but at the request of the buyer the necessary software can be installed and configured in advance. The package includes a watchdog to automatically reboot the machine in case of failure.

Farm ACD and ACD Crypto Crypto Compact Rack 19 does not vary in price with the same GPU configuration, and in the base case (six GeForce GTX 1050 Ti) 3Logic releases them at a price of $2 640. The most expensive package Crypto Compact includes eight accelerators GeForce GTX 1080 and costs $8 520. Crypto Rack reaches $8 760 with six GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Please note that 3Logic indicates the wholesale price of its devices.

The warranty on the farm continues for 12 months — not too long by the standards of server hardware, but it’s worth noting that graphics cards for mining often have a shorter warranty period. At the same ASUS motherboards MINING-RX470-4G, which uses 3Logic, it’s only 3 months.

3Logic ACD Crypto Compact: design

3Logic ACD Crypto Compact, justifying its name, looks like a small desktop form factor Midi Tower. A special purpose computer issue grille fan size 120 mm, occupying a front and rear surface of the chassis and a non-standard location of external connectors. The only interfaces that have access outside, it is a HDMI port, two USB and Gigabit Ethernet.

Successful the dimensions allow to use ACD Crypto Compact as a free-standing farm or mount it in a 19-inch server rack (at 4U). To do this, the manufacturer can include equipment mounting rails at the buyer’s request.

Stuffing ACD Crypto Compact arranged extremely tightly, but six case fans with a rotation speed of 3900 rpm provide excellent cooling arbitrarily powerful graphics cards, which 3Logic allows you to equip the farm. In fact, the owner can safely remove the individual fans on the GPU, as is done in the “real” server accelerators NVIDIA Tesla and AMD FirePro. On the other hand, it is permissible to reduce the rotation speed of the case fans in BIOS, if the farm will work in the living room.

Not the last merit is that ACD Crypto Compact such a compact chassis, belongs to the server power supply is 2 kW. The only downside to the latter is tiny and extremely loud fan size 40 mm. When case fans farm work at low revs, it becomes the main source of noise. We are unable to determine the manufacturer of the PSU, but judging by the weight and large size cables (16 AWG), this component of the farm is trustworthy is not less than other.

The choice of power supply and compact design ACD Crypto Compact — all this became possible thanks to the custom motherboard YANYU K17. It carries eight full-length PCI Express x16 (one PCI Express on each), whereby 3Logic need to use flexible risers. Moreover, the power to the graphics card is supplied directly from the motherboard through the 13 six-pin connectors, built around the PCI Express slots. By the way, the power supply, like many other server-based model yields a single voltage of 12 V, and in other denominations (for example, 3.3 V to M. 2 slot) motherboard converts it yourself.

Package contents ACD Crypto Compact, which came to us for testing, includes eight accelerators MINING-RX470-4G. Physically, these cards do not differ from the model ASUS Radeon RX 570 from the budget series Expedition, only the “mining” option is devoid of connectors, HDMI and DisplayPort. Garbage flashed them a modified BIOS with lower RAM timings, which is determined by the GPU like a Radeon RX 570. With default settings the clock frequency of the GPU reaches up to 1206 MHz and the RAM runs at an effective frequency of 7 GHz. The power limit of the accelerator is 85 watts.

3Logic ACD Crypto Rack 19 design

The following model farm from 3Logic originally designed for operation in the server rack, where it will take four units in height. Chassis like server transformer in the case Midi Tower, customised in size to fit 19 inch, and on it are mounted the elements of the fastener ears. Together with the farm can be enjoyed and rails, which come in handy if you consider the size and weight of the device. For transportation and facilities maintenance with a rail mounted on the front panel of the chassis provides massive handles.

On the front panel of the housing is a minimum set of controls, and external interfaces: buttons Power, Reset, power led and ROM, two USB ports. The rest of the space occupied by the arrays 120 mm fans. Unlike the ACD model, and some Crypto Compact rack server, Rack 19 ACD Crypto is no front-end video output. In addition, the farm would favor the ability to quickly replace the SSD via the front “basket”. Anyway, it is not easy to dismantle such a massive computer from the rack (if it is not installed on the rails) in order to get inside.

The back of the farm looks like a normal PC with standard ports of the motherboard, only stub connectors the extension remained in their places.

But inside the farm is structured not as ACD Crypto Compact. Esonic motherboard HM65-BTC-COMBO C2 has a standard ATX form factor and is powered by a desktop power supply. CPU is cooled by a simple aluminum cooler, but it has a larger radiator than the box intelestage cooler in the farm ACD Crypto Compact.

The graphics card is located in its own compartment of the housing and is surrounded by six fans standard size 120 mm with a speed of 3900 rpm. In contrast to ACD Crypto Compact cooling powered directly from the PSU, and no way to affect the fan speed from the BIOS of the motherboard. However, to work in the rack it does not matter in the least.

The connection of the video card with a PCI Express motherboard is made using extension thick USB cables. This risers with six-pin power connector which provides the standard graphics card is 75 watts of power. Small Board riser card is held in the slot only by pressing the contact plates, so collectors not only pulled signal cables together, but also cemented the risers in slots drops of glue. The cables of the power supply unit gently so as not to hinder the air flow from case fans.

Tabs on the other end of the riser with PCI Express x16 slots is not fixed in the housing. As a result, the accelerators are not directly and visibly SAG under its own weight when moving the farm. This feature allows you to set up a farm upright, as you would want to make a homemade “miners”, and before mounting in the rack remove the chassis cover and align the video card. But engineers 3Logic can understand: they obviously have a basis for a standard housing in which there is simply no legs in order to secure the risers to the required height.

In contrast to ACD Crypto mining Compact versions of Radeon RX 470, our copy ACD Crypto Rack 19 equipped with eight accelerators NVIDIA GP104-100. This is a reference Board based on the chip family of Pascal GP104, which combines the features of the GeForce GTX 1070 and GeForce GTX 1080. First-GP104-100 took the configuration of the compute units of the GPU, and the second — type memory (GDDR5X). Mining version accelerator carries only 4GB of RAM (the memory bus width of 256 bits is still fully involved), but its firmware is optimized for the blockchain and provides significantly better performance in comparison with what give the gaming graphics card on the NVIDIA chips. The clock frequency of the GPU match the reference parameters of the GeForce GTX 1080 — 1607 1734 MHz (Base Clock and Boost Clock respectively) as the effective frequency of memory — 008 10 MHz.

No matter how good these boosters at mining cryptocurrencies, their value in the secondary market will be even lower than mining versions of the Radeon RX 470. NVIDIA GP104-100 has no means of image output, and the amount of RAM it is twice less than the GeForce GTX 1070.